


With a Tired Soul, I Sleep

by anextraordinarymuse (December_Daughter)



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Brotp, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:10:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6102877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December_Daughter/pseuds/anextraordinarymuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Peggy is long overdue for a hug, and finally gets one. </p>
<p>Tag to episode 2x09.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a Tired Soul, I Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Tag to episode 2x09 - because I’ll cry forever about that scene in the desert. Someone just effing hug Peggy forever - actually, just give her to me. I’ll do it.

In the end, when it’s all over - when Whitney has been stopped and the world has been saved and Jason Wilkes is gone - in the end, Peggy can’t think of anything but how tired she is. 

There’s nothing left to her, now. The cataclysm has been averted, but Peggy still feels destroyed. Her bones ache, never mind her muscles; her feet drag because they can’t bear the weight they’re expected to carry. It’s more than her: it’s the weight of the guilt that coils in her gut, and the ghosts that rest on her shoulders. 

Sink or swim the Americans like to say. The world has been saved, but just for a while, Peggy wants to drown. 

She doesn’t take leave of anyone. She doesn’t say anything; simply slips out of the office where everyone has congregated and drives herself slowly to Howard’s mansion. Ana is still recuperating in the hospital, and Peggy can’t remember if Jarvis is already here, or at the hospital, or still back at the SSR office. She slips into the mansion quietly just in case - she neither wants to disturb, or be disturbed. 

Peggy strips thoughtlessly. Her room is a mess; she’ll pack everything up tomorrow. Her clothes, her tools, herself. She’ll take it all back to New York … tomorrow. Tonight she’s going to submerse herself in a bath and fend off the anguish that burns so hotly in her breast. 

She makes sure the water is hot. So hot it’s nearly scalding, in fact, and her jaw tenses as her skin crawls with the heat of it. The discomfort is both satisfying and momentary; as her body adjusts to the temperature, the first knot in her chest begins to loosen.

The bath isn’t big enough for Peggy to stretch out fully. She bends her knees and scoots down until the water covers her ears and her head is floating. She closes her eyes …

… Everyone around you dies! …

… and chokes around a sob that rattles her chest with its force. Peggy has done her job; she’s held it back and turned it away, because a broken heart must never get in the way of saving the world, but the threat has passed for now. Her job is done, and the world is whole, and she is alone. Again; always.

Peggy forces the air into her lungs and then submerges her head. Underwater, the only proof of her tears is the feeling they create as she lets go of them. Each one has a name: Michael, Steve, Colleen, Daniel, Jason … and around again, in a never ending loop. Only Daniel is still alive, and what is that worth, Peggy thinks, when her reappearance in his life has cost him a chance at happiness?

Ana’s name belongs on that list now too. Peggy didn’t shoot her, and she will not take responsibility for Jarvis’s choices, but it is true that where Peggy goes, danger follows; it is true that no matter how fiercely Peggy loves people, or how staunchly she tries to protect them, she keeps losing them. 

Steve is - was a hero, and the great war is over, and the world has been saved once again - but Peggy has never stopped fighting, and there will always be another war, and the sound of Steve’s voice is fading into the static delivered over a microphone. 

And Peggy is so tired - of being bad for the people she loves, and being lonely, and just being … so she holds her breath and cries into the hot, still water until her lungs are burning along with the rest of her. 

Finally, Peggy pulls herself up by the bootstraps. She washes her hair, and then herself, and then she climbs out of the tub. The water has cooled and so has she; her eyes are puffy from the tears, but the pressure in her chest is manageable again. 

She throws on her underthings and robe. Her hair hangs in wet tendrils around her face as she steps out of the bathroom and into her room only to discover that she has a visitor.

Jarvis’s face is drawn. He doesn’t look haggard like he did at Ana’s bedside, but neither does he look like his usual self. 

“Mr. Jarvis. Is everything alright? Ana?”

“Ana is fine,” he assures her. There’s a long pause in which he studies her face, and then, “I am ashamed of myself, Ms. Carter. As I said before, what I did - what I said is inexcusable. But …”

“That is quite enough, Mr. Jarvis.” Peggy cuts him off. She can’t do this again - not now, when she’s so raw and her armor is so weak. 

“With respect, Ms. Carter, I do not believe it is. I came here to say that you are wrong about yourself, and that I was wrong to say what I did. If you are responsible for anything, it is only the drive you instill in those around you to be more than they are - to be better.”

Peggy is going to cry again. The pressure and heat are building again in her chest, those twin heralds of furious grief that catch her in dark moments; giving in to it again will sweep her away. 

“Ana …” she starts.

“Ana chose to confront Whitney Frost. She told me the story: how she could have let them walk away, and chose not to. She makes her own decisions. As do I.”

Peggy nodded once. She had a grasp on her tears: she could keep them at bay as long as she remained silent. 

Then Jarvis stepped forward and put a hand on her arm. “I know that you are lonely, Ms. Carter, but you are not alone.”

The first time Peggy hugs Jarvis she’s sobbing silently. He doesn’t hug her like a detached English gentleman, but like a friend: with trusted arms and comforting silence. 

When Peggy goes to bed that night it’s with an all encompassing numbness. She sleeps until close to noon the next day, and when she wakes it’s with a noticeable lightness. Her ghosts are still there, but the sunlight dulls their shadows. 

She joins Ana in the sitting room just as Jarvis appears with Daniel. 

“I wanted to see how you were,” Daniel tells Ana, who smiles at him and assures him she’s fine. “And how you were,” he directs at Peggy.

Daniel looks at her in a way that tells Peggy clearly that he knows something was bothering her last night.

“I’m fine,” Peggy tells him. She doesn’t add something like ‘why wouldn’t I be?’ because it feels fake, and here, with these people, she doesn’t need to pretend.

Daniel nods and doesn’t press. He shifts a little on his crutch. “I could use a drink, if you’re feeling up to it?”

“It’s mid-afternoon, Daniel.” She’s half-teasing.

He shrugs and smiles nervously. “Coffee’s a drink.”

Peggy smiles. Her eyes are a little tired this morning, dried out, but the burn in her stomach is excitement now.

“Indeed it is,” she says. “Lead the way.”

Daniel is smiling, and the sun is shining, and yesterday they saved the world (again). Tomorrow might bring another crisis to be avoided, but today … 

Maybe today can be the first step toward something new. You’re not alone, Jarvis had said, and maybe she doesn’t need to be lonely anymore either. 

She doesn’t go back to New York.


End file.
